The denial of systematic rape has been a central messaging pillar of the pro-Hamas lobby. And throughout history this scourge has not been punished.
Was the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7 so awful that it justifies Israel’s brutal response? Since the counter-invasion of Gaza has killed many times more people, the question is central to whatever serious discourse there can be on so emotive and impactful an issue. And on that question, the UN has improbably issued a helpful report (read it here) on Monday, confirming sexual atrocities.
Books should be written on why the Gaza War has inflamed a world that seems by comparison indifferent not only to the disaster in Ukraine but to conflicts that have killed tens of thousands from South Sudan to Darfur to Rwanda to central Africa, and to the ongoing repression in Asia of the Uighurs and Rohingya. The level of obsession about Gaza is such that some corresponding knowledge would be helpful.
That goes both ways, by the way. Partisans of Israel should understand that their champions really do oppress the Palestinians in the West Bank in ways that are difficult to defend and would have created rage even among more placid populations than the Palestinians. Defenders of Hamas should know that their heroes are in no way trying to end the above but rather to perpetuate it; they seek to scuttle a two-state solution and promote perpetual war in which they hope to erase Israel and install an Islamic theocracy in as large a part of the world as possible (where the trans community and the gender non-binary would, by the way, not feel safe).
But why even speak of context, history, or global perspective? All that is ambitious when there is such widespread denial even of the elementary facts at hand.
There is an array of nonsense being vehiculated on social media. Some of it attempts to link Israel somehow to the brutality against it. Some denies the numbers – 1,200 people killed, over 200 hostages seized, including little children. And mainly, defenders of Hamas have been busily denying the persistent reports of horrifying sexual torture that accompanied the burning to death of entire families and the machine-gunning of hundreds of young people at a rave. The UN report found that this is a lie.
A second line of defense is that whatever abuses might have occurred were not ordered by Hamas but committed by stragglers who followed in a second and third wave through the breaches in the border fence. The report was not conclusive on this, but one needs to be especially naïve about jihadi terrorists to try so hard to exculpate them.
A third line of defense is whataboutism – the claim that Israel also commits sexual violence against Palestinian women prisoners. The report vaguely refers to Palestinian claims of problematic behavior but takes no sides. This is rubbish. In Israel, as in the US or UK or any other democratic country, abuses by individuals can certainly occur, and there can even be cases of establishments looking away. Any such occurrences would be a conceptual world apart from a drugged-up zombie army rampaging around civilian areas hacking off body parts and defiling corpses in a manic frenzy, amped up by hideous fantasies of heavenly virgins lying in wait of their “martyrs.”
The United Nations report found “reasonable grounds to believe” that victims in Israel were sexually assaulted, including rape and gang rape. “In most of these incidents, victims first subjected to rape were then killed,” a press release said. “The mission team also found a pattern of victims, mostly women, found fully or partially naked, bound, and shot across multiple locations.”
The 23-page report said the team also found “clear and convincing information” that some of the women and children taken back to Gaza that day by Hamas as hostages were subjected to “rape and sexualized torture and sexualized cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment,” and that there are “reasonable grounds to believe that this violence may be ongoing.”
The team was led by Pramila Patten, the U.N. special representative on sexual violence in conflict, and included a forensic pathologist and specialists in ethical treatment of survivors of sexual violence. The team interviewed survivors and witnesses and reviewed over 5,000 photographs and about 50 hours of footage of the attacks, and visited a morgue, a military base and the locations of several attacks.
The report called for “a fully-fledged investigative process” to determine the extent to which Hamas as an organization was specifically culpable.
This comes amid continued tensions between Israel and the UN over claims – indeed, evidence – that some staffers of UNRWA (the UN’s agency for aiding Palestinians) participated in the Oct. 7 invasion and that the organization is in various ways complicit with Hamas activities in the strip. It’s complicated, because the organization remains critical for provided education, health and social services in a territory that has now been devastated, with over a million displaced people. But it’s also not so complicated. The UN is seen in Israel these days as an organization fully dedicated to finding fault with its actions at the utterly absurd expense of other global issues.
In a rare good word about the UN, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Lior Haiat posted that Israel “welcomes the explicit recognition (of) the commission of sexual crimes by Hamas.”
Sexual terrorism is far from the only crime of Hamas. The group has been waging a terrorist campaign – suicide bombings, shootings and knifings, rocket attacks – for over 30 years, whose purpose is to prevent peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
In Gaza, it seized power by force from the Palestinian Authority and runs a ruthless police state. It spent a fortune in seized and repurposed development and humanitarian aid to build an extraordinary network of hundreds of kilometers of tunnels in which its leaders hide out with their hostages – infants and women and elderly persons ripped from their homes.
When it provokes Israel into wars that bring horrifying devastation upon its captive population – and that’s exactly where we are today – that is a success for Hamas, and not a failure. Note that they still refuse, unaccountably and incredibly, to surrender, or even accept exile.
It is hard to express in words how ignorant or twisted a person would have to be to support this terrorist mafia – or not to have at least sympathy for Israel’s goal of ending their control over the lives of millions. The level of cluelessness competes with that of Westerners who supported or joined ISIS a decade ago.
That jihadi group, of course, was Hamas’ fellow traveler when it comes to sexual crimes. Its “fighters” perpetrated systematic rape, sexual slavery, and other forms of sexual violence against women and girls in areas under their control. The Yazidis, a religious minority group with distinct beliefs and practices, were singled out by ISIS militants for particularly brutal treatment. The group captured and enslaved thousands of Yazidi women and girls, subjecting them to rape, sexual slavery, forced marriage, and other forms of sexual violence. Many of these women and girls were held captive in makeshift prisons or sold in markets as property.
It must also be noted that while these jihadi groups may have taken such crimes to new levels, they did not invent the genre. Throughout history, sexual violence against women has tragically been a recurring feature of conflicts worldwide. Just a few examples:
- During World War II, it occurred on a widespread scale, particularly in areas occupied by Axis powers. The most infamous case is the system of military sexual slavery established by the Imperial Japanese Army, known as the „Comfort Women” system, in which women and girls from conquered territories, primarily Korea, China, and the Philippines, were coerced or abducted into sexual servitude.
- The partition of British India into India and Pakistan in 1947 was accompanied by widespread communal violence, including mass rape and sexual violence against women from all religious communities
- During the Nigerian Civil War of 1967-70, also known as the Biafran War, sexual violence against women and girls was widespread.
- In the 1971 war which led to the independence of Bangladesh from Pakistan, widespread sexual violence was perpetrated by the Pakistani military and their local collaborators against Bengali women and girls.
- More recently, in the early 1990s, Bosnian Serb forces engaged in systematic rape campaigns targeting Bosniak and Croat women. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia prosecuted several cases involving sexual violence as war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
- During the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, sexual violence was used as a weapon of war by Hutu militias against Tutsi women and girls. Rape was widespread, and many women were subjected to brutal sexual violence, including gang rape, mutilation, and sexual slavery. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) prosecuted several cases involving sexual violence as war crimes and crimes against humanity. However, like in Bosnia, many perpetrators have evaded justice.
- The conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been marked by widespread sexual violence against women and girls by various armed groups, including government forces, rebel militias, and foreign militias. The UN has repeatedly condemned this, but no meaningful action was taken.
In each example, sexual violence against women was used as a tactic of war to terrorize and control civilian populations. The punishments that have been meted out so far are not even close to commensurate for the crime. So even if Israel succeeds in eradicating Hamas’ ability to do more of it in Gaza, humanity will still have quite a bit of work to do before it can celebrate its achievements as a species.
